


Before The Dawn

by softly_speaking_valkyrie



Series: Love Across the Stars [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Chases, Combat, Erotica, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Flirting, Force Choking (Star Wars), Intrigue, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Seduction, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:46:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27657046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softly_speaking_valkyrie/pseuds/softly_speaking_valkyrie
Summary: With information on her that could cripple if not bring about the total destruction of Crimson Dawn, Qi'ra flees Imperial pursuers to the Hutt Space planet of Quesh, an adrenal and drug development planet on the borders with the Empire. In her employ are two bounty hunters of yesteryear - Cad Bane and Moralo Eval struggling to make credits amidst the Empire's crackdown. Reaching Quesh, Qi'ra is desperate when she finds out Darth Vader is right behind her and gunning for the identity of Crimson Dawn's leader from her, as well as his location. After a small skirmish above the planet, Fulcrum and Captain Cassian Andor arrive on a similar mission of their own. But when Ahsoka believes that her old master, Anakin Skywalker is the real leader of the criminal syndicate, her feelings attempt to overthrow her mandate from Commander Sato...
Relationships: Qi'ra/Ahsoka Tano, Qi'ra/Han Solo
Series: Love Across the Stars [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756282
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	Before The Dawn

Qi’ra’s C-ROC _Gozanti_ -class light cruiser trailblazed for berth, skipping in microjump as fast as Moralo Eval could input to the control console. Cad Bane next to him honed in on the targeting computer out of the small hop through lightspeed after getting them closer to the planet but the constant beeping of the sensor panel drilled into all three sentients’ ears

The human woman gripped the railing of the commander’s platform and eyed in her peripherals the closing distance between the C-ROC and the Imperials. She didn’t think it was possible but the _Imperial_ -class Star Destroyer at their flank was certainly faster, and the tight laser of its tractor beam definitely had them trapped. If it didn’t already, it was about to given the look on Moralo’s face as he gasped into the weapon console. It seemed like this was where Qi’ra’s luck had finally ran out – the lack of Han’s sacred dice in her hand or on her person this time would spell her doom in the company of the bounty hunters of yesteryear. Moralo Eval seethed into his instruments as one of their guard droids moved from the sensor cluster to the secondary weapon command console.

“If you want to get us killed for sure, Moralo, keep doing what you’re doing,” Cad Bane hissed from across the console.

“Why, what _is_ he doing?” Qi’ra asked, still flexing her authority before the Empire stripped it from her. As she gripped the railing of the commander’s station, her sleeves pulled up, revealing the ever present scar on her wrist as a marker of devotion to Crimson Dawn. Both men had looked at it with wide and observant eyes since they’d been brought on this job – equally both knew as soon as any Imperial saw it on her skin, she’d be killed in moments.

Qi’ra knew differently. It wasn’t her circular brand that would get her killed, it was the information she had, information her pursuers wanted desperately enough to follow her into Hutt Space.

“Moralo?” She asked again when the neither alien answered her; Cad Bane seemed his usual apathetic self even when facing down the tractor beams of a Star Destroyer.

“I’m not going out without a fight!” Moralo Eval coughed in flailing defiance. “And neither should you, Bane! We can still make it out of this by targeting the tractor beams with the rear quad laser turrets!”

Bane had reached for his desperado hat on the dashboard and was propping it over his bald and blue Duros head while his solid red eyes glared across the gap in pilot’s consoles. They’d been the perfect pair to hire out of Nar Shaddaa when Qi’ra had been assigned this task, and now their infighting was going to cost her the time she needed to escape. And yet some of what Moralo had said made sense to her own sense of pride. They should be going out with some fight left in them, if Qi’ra had any plans to go out at all. Not with the information she had – there would be no death for her while she kept it secret.

“You turn these guns on that Imperial Star Destroyer and they’re not going to bother hauling your ugly hide into the hangar deck, Eval,” Bane hissed again, still gently fighting the tug of the destroyer’s tight tractor beams as they latched onto the hull of the C-ROC. The thing had been so slow it was inevitable that they’d be ensnared in the mass shadowing them. “They’re gonna blast this bucket into space and you along with it. I’m not going out like a dog like that,” the Duros continued, standing up from his seat.

One of the IG droids took his place as he walked for his effects. Strapping his utility belt around his waist, the gunslinger pulled out both of his LL-30 blaster pistols with a flourish of his abnormally long alien fingers. It was simply a display for Qi’ra, she knew, an effort to display he was worth Crimson Dawn’s money, if they escaped this entanglement well enough to collect.

“I’d prefer to deal with the boarding party myself.”

“What? You’re going to kill an entire boarding party full of Stormtroopers yourself, Bane?” Moralo asked incredulously as Qi’ra saw the red eyes and blue flesh approaching her while the backup crew of IG droids tried to salvage the flight plan to the distant planet.

“Nah, you’re going to help me, Eval,” Cad told him nonchalantly. “I’ll expect double my fee, of course. I didn’t sign up for an Imperial escape attempt,” he now told Qi’ra herself. She looked down on his and did well to hide her desperation, her fear about what was about to swallow up the hull of the C-ROC. Already out of the viewport she could see the massive shadow of the Star Destroyer consuming the horizon in new and lightened grey durasteel.

Qi’ra tried to control herself, steady her breathing and give nothing away as usual, just as Dryden had taught her in all the years since he had plucked her from Corellia like a souvenir. Those skills in Qi’ra’s hands had resulted in his death, and in killing him, she had ascended up the hierarchy of the syndicate all the more, assimilating her master’s position. But now she had a new master, someone more to hold the invisible leash latched to a chain around her scrawny and desperate neck.

Maul...

If the Imperials interrogated her, if they were targeting Crimson Dawn’s operations in the Outer Rim like she knew they were (no doubt one overzealous Moff was encroaching, wanting to make a name for himself in new Empire), they would extract not only the location of her employer, her owner, but the fact that he was even still alive. Qi’ra knew how the Empire was hunting down any and all Jedi or Force-wielders in the galaxy now, Maul had told her – it had been how he had crafted his new lightsaber. She also knew of the stories of how the Imperials interrogated and extracted such information from prisoners who were less than cooperative. She wouldn’t be subjected to such torment, but she couldn’t kill herself, she didn’t have the means. Cad Bane and Moralo Eval had inadvertently become her last line of defence for the moment, with no cards left to play and no solution before her.

She had to think, had to think.

“Is the _Xanadu Blood_ still operational in the launch tube?” She asked Cad Bane, her eyes offering another reason for her asking. She feigned distrust in his noble intentions, but the glaring shock of his prideful red eyes told her he had bought it.

“I’m not about to run while there are still credits with my name on them here,” he spat. “I’ll take care of these Imps, trust me.”

“Yeah, and then what?” Moralo was asking him, leaving his chair and joining them. “I hate to be the pessimist right now but there’s nothing we can do from where I’m standing...”

“And here I thought you were hired for your tactical mind,” Qi’ra jabbed, still trying to cover herself in front of the men. “Apparently Maul vastly underestimated your usefulness.”

Bane stroked his chin momentarily, some form of unorthodox plan coming to him. “Launch the cargo containers into the underbelly of the destroyer and then remote detonate them,” he offered, his tone more than a little grave for Qi’ra liking, but she could see the inspiration in his chaotic suggestion. That much anarchy right inside the gut of the vessel would render the Imperial response into pure folly, and would maybe impede their reaction times too much, giving the C-ROC seconds to access the navicomputer and extend this chase by a few more hours.

“How compromised are our systems, Eval?” Qi’ra had to ask the Phindian, he was the brains of the cockpit after all.

“Too exposed to configure the navicomputer without the cybertechs aboard the destroyer from seeing exactly where we would go,” Moralo replied, doing the mathematics all too quickly in his head. By now the underside of the Star Destroyer had completely overtaken the view from the viewport and they were staring almost directly into one of the hangar bays. “But Bane is right in thinking there isn’t much else we can do. Either they’ll follow us again or they’ll simply shoot us with quicker reaction times than we think.”

Bane grunted a little nonchalantly again, his apathy taking over. “We have a better change against the underside than the dorsal cannons. Program the navicomputer while we hold off the Imperials,” he instructed Qi’ra. Already the emergency alert was feeding into the cockpit from the airlock – Bane was flying out of the room before she could respond.

“I’ll feed the cargo release controls to the aft; Moralo, you fire them on my mark,” she ordered.

“Right... Moralo Eval to the rescue once again,” he droned on, reaching for his EE-3 carbine rifle stowed near the hatchway leading to the rest of the ship. Qi’ra watched as both of the bounty hunters left and the hatch closed; with a hand on the railing she refined her plan.

The _Xanadu Blood_ still prepared for launch in the single craft tube would be her escape route while Cad Bane and Moralo offered themselves to the prejudice of the boarding party. She knew them shooting first would reorganise the Imperials’ priority of taking the crew of the C-ROC alive. She also knew she could reach the launch tube via the vents, and the IG droids would see to themselves. Reaching over for the commanding console Qi’ra quickly wiped the strand of stressful hair away from her vision behind her ear and transferred the cargo controls to the nearest terminal near the airlock. Moralo would find it, or he wouldn’t. The rest, she didn’t care – it was kill or be killed to survive. She’d done similar things to Han to survive, and keep her place in Crimson Dawn. While the C-ROC provided the chaos for the destroyer to deal with, she would simply slip away in Bane’s personalised fighter and propel into Hyperspace. She’d be in the Dathomir system in hours, and under the protection of her master once again.

“Moralo, I’ve transferred the cargo controls to your area of the ship,” Qi’ra quickly breathed into the intercom.

“Good, they’re breaching now,” she heard back over the grinding sound of the incursion team blasting their way through the hatch. Qi’ra’s eyes flashed to the vent grate above the hatch and she broke into a quick sprint. Time was against her here more than it had ever been. 

Moralo was ducking into a deeper crouch when the Stormtroopers began to file in through the blasted hatchway – Cad Bane covered his back the best the Duros could with his left blaster pistol, firing double the flak back at the incurring team. Both of the bounty hunters hugged the wall, digging in and waiting for the Imperials to come to them. Dumbly enough, more bodies clad in white and black plasteel continued to file in through the intrusion point. Cad Bane reached at his belt, priming a thermal detonator and throwing it back into the blasted doorway. The resulting explosion rocked and shook the docking tube, Moralo could feel as the shudder hit the body of the C-ROC. He fell to the floor on his knees and seethed as a Stormtrooper came flying to the deck before him – still alive and wanting to make a name, the trooper reached for his blaster. Moralo hissed and pointed the wide barrel of his EE-3 carbine right at the Imperial, shooting him directly in the face for daring to get back up.

“A thermal detonator in _these_ confined spaces?” Moralo yelled at Bane over the continuous fire. “Are you trying to kill us?!”

“Quit your complaining and keep firing,” the Duros hollered back, still making the effort to cover his old partner with the second of his blaster pistols. “By my count they’re nearly through.”

“By _your_ count, Bane.”

“Come on, don’t go getting old on me now, Eval...” Bane hissed, but stopped short before he could finish. Both men hadn’t noticed the returning fire from down the docking tube had totally ceased and the funnelling resource of bodies had stopped along with it. Bane clutched his neck and Moralo watched in horror as a familiar sensation wrapped around the Duros bounty hunter. “Eval!” Bane choked.

“That’s... not possible...” Eval murmured, before feeling the same tension that had gripped his colleague wrapping around his own throat. “No!” He screamed, but could not resist no matter how hard he tried. Bane was already lifted off of the by an invisible force, his guns dropping as he clawed and clambered at his own neck to fight. While he did, Moralo tried the same, still holding his carbine blaster rifle in one hand as he fawned over his fate. Each of them knew what this was, although it had seemed like a lifetime since they’d encountered anyone who could do this to them.

This was the Force.

“You...” Eval wheezed as his attention was brought down the docking tube; a solid black presence had taken up the space just beyond the blasted entry point. The masked intruder held up an opened palm as Cad Bane and Moralo Eval choked in an invisible embrace.

“The girl...” Darth Vader asked.

“The... bridge...” Bane hissed as he choked. “She’s on the bridge!” He yelled desperately, still gripping at the invisible hand Vader had wrapped around his throat to kill him. Whatever reason for, the Sith Lord was left unsatisfied with the bounty hunter’s response, and continued to choke them both to the point of excruciating pain. Moralo felt it too, his fingers twitching over the trigger of his carbine – desperately he tried to muster the strength to lift the barrel at his murderer.

A single Stormtrooper came trotting down the docking tube to Vader’s flank, his blaster primed and held across his chest diagonally from what little Moralo could still see. He looked across and saw Cad losing the last vestiges of breath left in him. The pair of them had survived the turmoil of the Clone Wars and the death of the Republic from behind laser gate cells on Coruscant and they were going out like this after all. They were going to die choking in the corridor of a rundown light cruiser chasing a doomed job for Crimson Dawn of all people.

“Sir, we’ve got a fighter launching in the ship’s launch tube,” the Stormtrooper reported.

Vader’s grip tightened somehow, Moralo groaning from the pain tensing around his spine and throat. Cad Bane let out a guttural and feral cry at the revelation of deception. She’d meant to sacrifice them all along – Moralo only wondered if Qi’ra had known Darth Vader of all people was chasing them. Just what kind of information did that woman possess?

“She’s... taking... my ship!” Bane struggled. Finally, he gave in and collapsed in the middle of Vader’s grip. It was enough to trigger the last bout of rage and gamble within Moralo Eval, with nothing left to lose at all as Bane left him.

He funnelled all of his last strength into his arm and fired off at a shot at Vader, hoping to take the dark behemoth of a man along with him. He saw the Sith Lord shrug a little and deflect the blaster bolt with the quick flick of his free hand; Eval gasped one last breath before seeing Vader tense the grip of his choking hand and everything went black for one final time. His body was limp and the life left both of the bounty hunters at long last. Vader dropped them onto the floor and strode without a word down the corridor of the C-ROC toward the fighter housing compartment.

Qi’ra turned over the motivator and primed the thrusters as fast as she could – outside of the cockpit she could already hear the hatchway open. Turning, she could see the black-robed figure she feared the most at that moment. Vader was right behind her as the _Xanadu Blood_ came to life and lifted on her repulsorlifts in an instant. The bulkheads of the launch tube lifted open slowly but surely as Qi’ra warmed up the thrusters as fast as possible – Vader encroached upon her as Stormtroopers began to pepper the rear of the fighter with a host of lasers. The shields held as Qi’ra panicked, but remained resolute.

Just before she was about to fire the thrusters an jet out of the C-ROC, she felt the pressure of a grip take hold over the _Xanadu Blood_ and hold her in place. It was him; Darth Vader was stood in a strong posture with his coterie scattered over the floor. With his hands outstretched he gripped the _Rogue_ -class Porax-38 starfighter with the Force and held Qi’ra in place, stopping her from leaving. But she would not have it.

Qi’ra gripped the throttle hard and remembered the feeling of Han at her side in the speeder on Corellia as they were escaping the dogs and thugs of Lady Proxima. She had not escaped the slums of Corellia that day like Han had done at the spaceport, but she had fled later in life as an operative of Maul’s Crimson Dawn, and she was going to do it again today.

She fired of the throttle, pushing it to its limit and activating the afterburners of the _Rogue_ -class. They pushed Vader back and off of her tail and with a sudden pulse of power the _Xanadu Blood_ was streaming out of the captured C-ROC and into the space underneath the destroyer.

“Lord Vader,” his Stormtrooper Commander approached still in the hulk of the C-ROC, standing at attention before the Dark Lord. “The _Surefire_ is coming out of Hyperspace off of our bow, My Lord.”

“Relay commands to the Captain to target that fighter,” Darth Vader demanded, turning to head back to his Star Destroyer. “Alert the bridge to prepare for lightspeed and set course for Mandalore, I wish to speak with Captain Gideon aboard his Star Destroyer," the Sith Lord addressed, walking out but then paused, turning to his Stormtrooper Commander and holding out his finger like an iron pointer, the grill of his menacing helmet brandished and almost smoking with the steam or gas of his robotic breaths. The Dark Lord could strike fear into anyone alive, including the majority of his own command - plenty more Stormtroopers and weak-willed officers had met their end at the point of Darth Vader's finger since his mysterious emergence as the Emperor's enforcer at the end of the Clone Wars. "Alert Director Krennic also... I wish to speak with him as well as Gideon."

“Yes, Lord.”

Vader took one more look around the launch tube, staring through his visor eyes out in the small space above the Hutt world of Quesh. "I sense... A presence, on the horizon..."

Another press of a button of the dashboard and already Qi’ra could sense the cargo containers jettisoning off of her cruiser, crashing to the underbelly of the Star Destroyer to secure her escape. Quesh was underneath them, a Hutt safe haven and a planet where the Empire had no jurisdiction or authority still – Qi’ra didn’t wish to gamble her safety on the goodwill of the Hutts and their slave species. She turned the nosecone of her new fighter to open space and reached for the screen of the navicomputer. In a proud thought, it looked like she would escape by the skin of her teeth, only for Qi’ra’s relief to come crashing down around her like a meteor.

Directly in front, almost to rub it in her face, the massive hulk of an _Arquitens-_ class light cruiser immerged from Hyperspace to cut through her escape vector. How had it arrived precisely at the worst possible moment?

“You have got to be kidding me,” she cursed to herself, altering her course to put Quesh directly in front of her. Once more she fired the afterburners, but it didn’t matter.

Alert beeping from the console dashboard overwhelmed her senses – the _Arquitens_ had readied to combat status and turbolaser batteries had found her approach vector. Like clockwork the support ship was firing onto her position and hitting extremely closely to its target – Qi’ra cried out from the flak hitting directly in front of her. She was no pilot, that had always been Han, he was their driver and their flyer. In the bosom of Dryden Vos and Crimson Dawn she hadn’t been trained to fly particularly well either, enough to get her from one point to another. Qi’ra closed her eyes and tried to calm down, holding the controls of Cad Bane’s personalised fighter craft. She kept the surface of Quesh in her viewport and locked onto the ground, keeping her strafing solid, and began to pray as she headed planetside. If the galaxy willed it, she wouldn’t be shot down, and would take her luck with the Hutts. With a little more than luck, not even Vader would follow her to Quesh’s surface.

Qi’ra being herself, she knew she would be having more luck if she was over Nar Shaddaa.

* * *

Ahsoka’s blockade runner immerged from Hyperspace over Quesh from _Phoenix Home_ , Captain Andor in command of the bridge as the various control consoles came online underneath their rebel ensigns. “Full readout scan, double time,” Cassian ordered as the bridge fully came alive.

“Caution, Captain Andor, I sense something has happened here before we’ve arrived – and not to do with Crimson Dawn,” Ahsoka breathed, her hand moving to the spy’s shoulder. She tried to soothe his aloof wits, tried to keep things calm and focused on their task at hand; sensing Cassian under her, she could feel his apprehension and mild fear of dealing with the sprawling criminal syndicate instead of dealing guerrilla-style blows against the Empire like the rebel agent was used to. “Helm, bring us about and prepare for entry into the atmosphere.”

The sensor operator turned in his chair. “Captain, I have an Imperial battleship on my scopes around the planet at heading three-six and five-thousand kilometres,” the man reported.

“Fulcrum?” Cassian asked, offering the floor to his compatriot. Ahsoka still commanded respect and some rank even if her stature within the growing rebel factions was rather unofficial.

“Is it an Imperial Star Destroyer, lieutenant?” She asked, ever cautious as the CR90 Corvette broke rank and headed for the surface of Quesh.

“Negative, Fulcrum,” the sensor operator retorted. “I’m scanning the profile of an Arquitens, ma’am, as well as the remnants of a C-ROC light cruiser and its cargo scattered all around the skybox.”

“Is the Arquitens bearing on us?” Cassian interjected as he and Ahsoka both approached the sensor cluster.

“It doesn’t appear so, Captain Andor,” the lieutenant responded. “It appears to be holding formation and pumping its power into the sensor array, sifting through the debris from the C-ROC, which also appears to have been destroyed by Imperial turbolasers, given the size of the damage I’m detecting. I’m also not picking up any further Imperial transponders down in the atmosphere.”

Ahsoka took charge and crossed over to the communications ensign, her hand on the head of his chair while Cassian further examined the sensor readouts to see what his lieutenant had. “Contact the air traffic control tower at the Triton Spaceport, it’s where the atmospheric toxins are at their lowest level.”

“Still think the Crimson Dawn Lieutenant is here?” Andor asked.

Reaching to stroke her chin with lekku gently draped over her bodice – she knew if her target was engaged in the destruction of the C-ROC light cruiser she probably at least attempted to make for ground. The scorch marks on some of the floating debris and the size of the ruined chunks of the cruiser spoke to Ahsoka that there had been a second ship occupying the space above Quesh with the Arquitens. It would have most likely have been a Star Destroyer, now into Hyperspace and away while the supporting ships continued whatever operation was underway. But what could the Imperials have to gain by engaging Crimson Dawn? Ahsoka pondered, searching her feelings and trying to gauge something from the floating wreckage.

Among the scattered ruins of star cruiser she could sense something vaguely familiar and certainly amiss. She could feel the Force, the presence of the Dark Side where the Star Destroyer must have been. She was surprised the Arquitens had not yet hailed them in an attempt to secure the air space, but with so much scattered pieces of the much larger C-ROC, perhaps the rebel blockage runner was more or less obscured from sensor range.

“She’s alive,” Ahsoka replied discerning from her ruminations that the Crimson Dawn lieutenant made aware to her was certainly still breathing, and had made for the surface. The C-ROC had either had escape pods she could have used or a fully operational fighter as a last resort hidden away.

“I have another battleship on my scopes, Fulcrum. Captain Andor, coming out of Hyperspace now – negative. Make it three ships, all immerging at six-thousand kilometres,” the sensor operator alerted, his console beeping in an emergency tone. Ahsoka looked out to portside and saw them coming out of lightspeed near the scanning Arquitens.

“Star Destroyer?” Cassian asked desperately as he peered down to view the console with his own eyes.

“Negative, sir – two _Gozanti_ -class cruisers and a _Quasar Fire_ -class cruiser carrier, they’re launching TIE Fighters into an air patrol.”

“We won’t last long against that much firepower if they detect us,” Cassian told Ahsoka with a stark look on his face. With his position as a spy came experience, more so against Imperial targets than Fulcrum herself. But for what she lacked in experience during this era, Ahsoka made up for in crackpot schemes and unconventional strategy she had seen through during the last galactic conflict. Clone Wars veterans had found their place either in the Imperial Navy or among the growing splinter cells of Rebellion operatives. Commander Sato and Captain Andor were two of the best Ahsoka had seen thus far.

Ahsoka turned to the helmsman with a look oozing determination. “Break for ground now, flight lieutenant. They’ll have no jurisdiction within the spaceport and we can take our time finding our Crimson Dawn friend.”

Cassian flanked her, in his eyes she made out the unexpected – likeminded unorthodox conventionalism. “You know that won’t stop them,” he reminded her. And he was right, of course. The Imperial war machine (despite the irony of there being no war to speak of anymore) hardly cared where the official borders of the Empire ended and where Hutt or anyone else’s sovereignty began. The Outer Rim Territories was an expansion region for hot-headed and ambitious governors alike to make their mark. Quesh wasn’t Nal Hutta or Nar Shaddaa and certainly wasn’t the same kind of backwater as Makeb, it was an adrenal and drug haven – it was a land for big pharma. The TIEs would patrol the spaceport, but it was better to lose them in there than try and make a stand against four cruisers with the limit weaponry of a blockade runner.

“They can try, but the Hutts still hold some authority within their own borders,” Ahsoka, in turn reminded Cassian. “I can sense my target is doing the same as we will – she’s hiding among the criminal presence on Quesh and trying to make contact with the upper echelons of Crimson Dawn. If Commander Sato’s theory is right, even its leader.”

“Are you sure the Inquisitorius is involved with Crimson Dawn?”

“Commander Sato seemed to think so – Inquisitors attacking their shipments near Kessel and roughing up the Pikes _is_ a new development and if it was the Inquisitors we saw on the Nexus, that means there are Jedi involved in Crimson Dawn’s operations.”

“Or worse,” Cassian made clear, an ominous reminder of who else could be let loose on the galaxy after the terror of Order 66. Ahsoka knew that all too well, during Empire Day and all the Empire Days following the first. She’d encountered so few of her former Jedi, something about this however, felt strangely too familiar.

It felt of the Clone Wars, felt of something she had felt before and if there was a hint of familiarity about this operation she already knew she had to see it through the end. Looking into Captain Andor’s eyes, Ahsoka saw the remnants of a fighting Separatist, of a noble idea twisted and used by the likes of Count Dooku what felt like forever ago but still she recognised the remnants of that ideal not yet dead. If he still had the drive to attack and fight against the Empire in the stead of the Republic then Ahsoka could muster the strength to continue her true mission.

But it was worse than that – in the familiarity she dared to hope.

“If there’s even a chance Anakin Skywalker is alive and embroiled in this Crimson Dawn business, I am going to find him, am I understood?” She nearly glared at Cassian, her duality of expression and emotion conflicting within her. “Make for ground with best speed,” she said now to the helmsman without allowing Cassian room to retort against her. The remnants of his Separatist ideals resulted in conflict with the Jedi leanings of the growing Rebellion still, but Cassian would never act out of subordination for Fulcrum.

“I’ll find the lieutenant myself if I have to,” Ahsoka added.

“I told Commander Sato I would have your back, Lady Tano,” Cassian spat in retort, his honour impugned. “I’m here, I have it. Even if you insist on making this a personal crusade.”

“For Anakin Skywalker, you would too...”


End file.
